The political phenomenon commonly referred to as the "Gen Z movement" is a turning point in Nepal's recent political history. Within a period of merely 27 hours, the nation underwent unprecedented state fragility. The event was characterized by colossal human casualties, with more than seven dozen fatalities, and systematic attacks on key state infrastructures. Symbolically and functionally significant buildings—like Singha Durbar (the secretariat of the federal government), the building of the Federal Parliament, the Supreme Court, Shital Niwas (the Presidential palace), and numerous police stations, private residences, and business buildings—were attacked with arson. The violence resulted in the downfall of the government of the day, the dissolution of parliament, and a radical restructuring of the political order.
A significant aspect of
the crisis was the immobilization of the state's coercive machinery. Law
enforcement agencies were visibly ineffective, and the national army was
substantially non-functional until the crisis had spiraled beyond management.
The eventual dominance of the military into the political arena was
symbolically signaled by the Chief of Army Staff speaking to the nation in
front of a backdrop that had a portrait of King Prithvi Narayan Shah. The fact
that subsequent negotiations with movement representatives were conducted at
the military headquarters further underscored the institution's authoritative
involvement in civilian political processes.
In the midst of this
institutional vacuum, the then Prime Minister offered his resignation, which
was formally accepted by the President under a disputed clause allowing him to
stay on in a caretaker capacity. During this interregnum, the executive fell
under the custody of the national army, highlighting the complete breakdown of
traditional constitutional safeguards. Political violence swelled, including a
physical assault on former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife, Dr.
Arju Rana Deuba. Live broadcast of these events contributed to a general
climate of fear and political disorientation. In a further violation of
constitutional convention, the ex-Chief Justice Sushila Karki was appointed
Prime Minister and, in conjunction with the army, enforced a nationwide curfew.
The crisis excited
intense regional interest, with the security forces of a neighboring country
expressing a willingness to intervene at the formal request of the government.
Internally, the army's conditional support to the civilian government—such as
offering helicopter evacuation only after it was ensured that the Prime
Minister would resign—demonstrated the role of the military as a political
arbiter. Negotiations, conducted under heavy military surveillance at Shital
Niwas, involved political party leaders virtually acting as delegates under the
control of the army. Military leadership expressly threatened that withdrawal
would be the consequence of a collapse of political consensus, graphically
illustrating the conditional nature of state power.
Party leaders, imprisoned
for ten days amid constitutional violations and dissolution of parliament,
subsequently negotiated in characteristically anachronistic terms. For
instance, policy documents presented to the Maoist party's central committee
did not have any content reference to the Gen Z movement or to the new
political reality. The meeting degenerated into classic intra-party
factionalism between leaders Prachanda, Prakash, and Prabhakar, rather than a
critical analysis of the structural break. The debate was characterized by
rhetorical glorification and demonization, a profound departure from the
party's professed ideals of dialectical debate.
This analytical failure
reflects a broader political stagnation. Constitutionally, the last period was
already marred by grave irregularities. The formation of the UML-Congress
alliance government under Article 76(2) of the constitution was followed by
failure to secure a vote of confidence. Rather than invoking Article 76(3) to
swear in the leader of the largest party, a new government was sworn in under
76(2) through coercive means, including threats to the President and the
judiciary. Judicial review was effectively staved off, as writ petitions were
dismissed without process, and the Election Commission refused to accept
intra-party expulsions. This political engineering, initially aimed at power
consolidation for KP Sharma Oli, was also followed by a sharp geopolitical
reorientation. Oli's alignment with U.S. strategic interests, as typified by
his push for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact, was in
congruence with his assertion of freedom from Indian influence, as exemplified
by the re-fueling of boundary controversies regarding Kalapani and Lipulekh.
The Gen Z movement, however
vocalized as a reaction against corruption and social media restrictions,
happened in the context of this institutional logjam and geopolitical
maneuvering. That it happened opens up the risk of instrumentalization by
actors who want to generate political instability and project Nepal as a failed
state. The silence of democracy's guardians—the absence of court challenges to
the parliament's dissolution, the compromised judiciary, and a comatose civil
society—only underlines the depth of the crisis.
Regionally, the Nepali
developments appear in consonance with broader patterns of transnational
political realignment apparent in South Asia, replicating experiments in Sri
Lanka and Bangladesh. That suggests that the crisis is not merely a domestic
problem but is an aspect of a broader assault on democratic norms, part of a
global pattern of populist destabilization and institutional erosion. It is in
this somber context that the inability of Nepal's political parties, and the
Maoists most of all, to update their analytical paradigms from decades-old
intra-party rivalries highlights a fundamental disconnect between the magnitude
of external structural change and the stagnation of domestic political
discourse. This intellectual and political complacency renders the polity
extremely susceptible to internal collapse as well as external manipulation.
